Vietnam was massively brutal as a war, and these were not exceptions, right? There was an endless, you know, besides killing civilians, rape, cutting off ears and putting them on bayonet. The logic of having to separate the civilians from the guerrillas, and therefore creating free fire zones, it was all structured in such a way that it wasn't exceptional.
Featuring Nadia Abu El-Haj on Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America. A truly remarkable book about the unseen ideological foundations of American militarism: American civilians are enjoined to venerate troops, deferring to their traumatized positionality. The first in a two-part interview.
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Buy: Fighting in a World on Fire by Andreas Malm versobooks.com/books/4138-fighting-in-a-world-on-fire
The Sinking Middle Class: A Political History of Debt, Misery, and the Drift to the Right by David Roediger haymarketbooks.org/books/1879-the-sinking-middle-class